Поиск:coh

The Faithful Brothers

Soul and R&B from Tel Aviv

"It's so difficult to produce the feel and the excitement of the classic northern sound, but The Faithful Brothers were born to do it and they do it so well." Craig Charles, The Craig Charles Funk & Soul Show, BBC Radio 6 Music.

Is there a Northern Soul scene in Tel Aviv? The surprising answer is – yes, there is. If you're a soulie and in town, look for the Tel Aviv Soul Club, and you might find yourself swaying across a talcum-powder covered floor to Tel Aviv's own unique blend of classic Northern Soul 45s and early 1960s R&B sounds.

Chances are that those 45s will come out of the record boxes of one of the brothers Neeman, Johnnie and Bin. Sons of an Israeli diplomat, they travelled abroad extensively as children, in the 1960s and 1970s, discovering the wonderful world of rare soul music on the way. Tel Aviv Soul Club, aka TASC, is the brainchild of Yashiv Cohen, a DJ who, in 2006, lured the brothers Neeman, whose massive soul collections been hitherto confined to their respective living rooms, into playing their records to the Tel Aviv public. Yashiv is also the lead singer of Men of North Country (MONC), a Tel Aviv band with a distinct sound, blending rock, British pop and soul, that has recorded two albums for the London based label Acid Jazz Records, and toured Europe numerous times.

Since Neeman means Faithful in Hebrew, Yashiv woke up one morning with the crystallization that MONC must create a spin-off, a more puristic soul band, called the Faithful Brothers. There the biological Neeman/Faithful brothers would be joined by some of the members of MONC and a few more musical brothers from Tel Aviv to create new, original soul and R&B music. With a nod to the Northern Soul slogan "Keep The Faith", the name seemed too perfect to waste. The fact that the Neeman brothers were collectors, and not musicians, did not bother a man of vision like Yashiv. One day, he sent Johnnie some lyrics he wrote, asking him to compose music for it. Well, Johnnie called Bin, and they met in Johnnie's record room. With Johnnie playing some of the few chords he knew on his dusty old acoustic guitar, out came Teenage Frost, the first-ever musical composition of the Neeman brothers, recorded by MONC.

It took a few more years, but gradually the brothers succumbed to their fate, to continue their musical progression, from collectors to DJs to musicians. Johnnie took his guitar, Bin took to the piano, and the brothers began pouring out some of their influences, creating new songs. It is finally all coming together. The Faithful Brothers – now an eight-piece band, complete with a mighty brass section – release their first album "The Faithful Brothers".

DJ Python’s Worldwide Unlimited return with a trio of giddy-up garage screwballs by BFTT of the Mutualism cohort.

’THP’ hails BFTT’s transition from one party city, Leeds, to another, Manchester, in the post-lockdown euphoria when everyone was dusting off their dancing clogs. He hadn’t made club music during the pandemic, but got right back on it that summer, chiselling signature production details into a trio of restive swingers and buoyant steppers explicitly built for the party.

‘THP’ trains his energies into an itchy switch of Yorkshire garage-techno-donk aerated with feathered dub chords and percolated percussion. ‘Keeplies’ more loosely dances on the offbeat complete with unstable, grinding subs whisked into a dipping UKG lather like Pangaea meets early Aya, and ‘Seems’ picks up your trotters on a ruggedly warped speed garage tilt, all melting Moschino logos and acid-spiked fizz bound for peak times.

'Ascending to the apex of an eight-year grind, the band reached critical mass on 2018’s DISPOSE. The standout “FEEL NOTHING” exploded with 31.4 million Spotify streams, while the project eclipsed 60.7 million streams on the platform. Billboard raved, “DISPOSE is the band’s most polished and cohesive work to date,” and Alternative Press noted, “DISPOSE makes it clear that TPIY challenge both the listeners and themselves more and more with each release.” Grading the album “9.0-out-of-10,” Rock Sound predicted it “should finally – and deservedly – make The Plot In You a name that everyone knows.” They supported the record by hitting the road with Underoath, The Amity Affliction, Like Moths To Flames, Sum 41, and more. The album racked up over 100 million streams and received praise from Billboard, Rock Sound, Alternative Press, and more.

You can't get Deeper if you're standing still. That's intentional, says the Chicago quartet's Nic Gohl. "Does it feel good when you're listening to this song? Does your body want to move with it?" These are the questions he asked himself as he and bandmates Shiraz Bhatti, Drew McBride, and Kevin Fairbairn were writing and recording Careful!, their third record and Sub Pop debut. "I wanted these to be interesting songs, but in a way where a two-year-old would vibe out to it," Gohl adds.

"It's pop music, basically." That "basically" qualifier is working pretty hard, as fans of 2020's Auto-Pain might suppose. On Careful!, they're not reimagining their sound so much as testing its limits. If you want to, you can hear echoes of David Bowie's Low in the snapping rhythm and gray-sky synths of "Tele," but you can also hear a bit of Auto-Pain in the nailed-in, stippling lines being spit out by Bhatti's drum programming and McBride's synthesizer.

"Fame" seems to stumble together and nearly fall apart, the dialed-up noise making the beat feel maniacal and a little invincible, the whole thing a series of short, snipped, autonomous gestures that are by now Deeper's trademark. "Build a Bridge" pushes in the opposite direction, using a prickly guitar line to launch into big, smeary art-pop, its emotional palette clear, well-defined, and easy to latch onto.

On "Sub," Gohl sings above and below the melody like Ian McCulloch, bellowing and wondering and ruminating and rounding into swaggering confidence that the band rises to meet. It's festival headliner music that still feels like it was written in a garage. That fraternal interdependence is near the center of Deeper's music. The musical and lyrical devotion to mutuality makes this restlessly curious, stylistically broad album feels like the most coherent portrait of who Deeper is. Or, as McBride ultimately frames it, "Careful! is about looking out for one another."

You can't get Deeper if you're standing still. That's intentional, says the Chicago quartet's Nic Gohl. "Does it feel good when you're listening to this song? Does your body want to move with it?" These are the questions he asked himself as he and bandmates Shiraz Bhatti, Drew McBride, and Kevin Fairbairn were writing and recording Careful!, their third record and Sub Pop debut. "I wanted these to be interesting songs, but in a way where a two-year-old would vibe out to it," Gohl adds.

"It's pop music, basically." That "basically" qualifier is working pretty hard, as fans of 2020's Auto-Pain might suppose. On Careful!, they're not reimagining their sound so much as testing its limits. If you want to, you can hear echoes of David Bowie's Low in the snapping rhythm and gray-sky synths of "Tele," but you can also hear a bit of Auto-Pain in the nailed-in, stippling lines being spit out by Bhatti's drum programming and McBride's synthesizer.

"Fame" seems to stumble together and nearly fall apart, the dialed-up noise making the beat feel maniacal and a little invincible, the whole thing a series of short, snipped, autonomous gestures that are by now Deeper's trademark. "Build a Bridge" pushes in the opposite direction, using a prickly guitar line to launch into big, smeary art-pop, its emotional palette clear, well-defined, and easy to latch onto.

On "Sub," Gohl sings above and below the melody like Ian McCulloch, bellowing and wondering and ruminating and rounding into swaggering confidence that the band rises to meet. It's festival headliner music that still feels like it was written in a garage. That fraternal interdependence is near the center of Deeper's music. The musical and lyrical devotion to mutuality makes this restlessly curious, stylistically broad album feels like the most coherent portrait of who Deeper is. Or, as McBride ultimately frames it, "Careful! is about looking out for one another."

Each song has its own story, which the duo has reimagined in their own unique way, covering topics such as love, heartbreak, and friendship - with tradition with emotions nestled underneath.Nominated for Best Vocalist at the Scottish Jazz Awards in 2022, vocalist and songwriter Louise Dodds released her self-penned album The Story Needs an Ending in 2022, subsequently touring the album around the UK. The album was selected as one of three notable jazz releases of 2022 by The Scotsman. Prior to this, 2020 saw Louise having the honour of opening for Norma Winstone MBE.

Elchin Shirinov is a jazz pianist, composer, and arranger, originally from Azerbaijan. Most recently he was included in All About Jazz's December 2022 poll of the Top 200 favourite living pianists in the world. From 2018 to 2022 he was a member of the famous jazz double bassist Avishai Cohen's trio, during which time he recorded three albums and toured internationally as a member of the trio.

The music explores textures, colors and abstract lands. The play is wild and free.

Dunietz's new compositions go beyond the conventional song structures, and the improvisation is inspired by the roots of Jazz, while allowing itself to be stimulated by other sources such as voices of birds and trees. The album has several free improvisation pieces, bringing forth a fresh side of this very swingy rhythm section.

As a spectral musician and artist, Dunietz tends to focus on the phenomenon and acoustics of sound rather than its potential semantic qualities. Playing trio music from this perspective, created a very crisp and deep sound, beautifully captured in the recording.

The sessions with Walla (Death Cab for Cutie, Tegan and Sara, Foxing) struck the perfect balance between preparation and experimentation, injecting new life into the band's style of soft- hearted Midwestern indie rock with an ever so subtle Americana twist. The solidified Ratboys lineup stretched and expanded their vision in the studio, adding unexpected elements and instruments like rototoms, talkboxes, and fiddles. The result is Ratboys' most sonically diverse record, shifting wildly from track to track. It flexes everything from fuzzy power pop choruses on "Crossed That Line" and "It's Alive!" to a warm country twang on "Morning Zoo" to mournful folk on the titular track. After more than ten years and four studio albums, The Window finally captures Ratboys as they were always meant to be heard--expansive while still intimate, audacious while still tender--the
sound of four friends operating as a single, cohesive unit.

Here John Cohen, Mike Seeger, and Tracy Schwartz provide backing for Cousin Emmy, the skilled banjo player, fiddler, and singer, whose legacy as a country music pioneer is cemented in the memories of those who heard her animated performances onstage and on the radio. This album contains some of her only recorded material, including several of her own compositions along with selections of old-time and bluegrass repertoire.

The sessions with Walla (Death Cab for Cutie, Tegan and Sara, Foxing) struck the perfect balance between preparation and experimentation, injecting new life into the band's style of soft- hearted Midwestern indie rock with an ever so subtle Americana twist. The solidified Ratboys lineup stretched and expanded their vision in the studio, adding unexpected elements and instruments like rototoms, talkboxes, and fiddles. The result is Ratboys' most sonically diverse record, shifting wildly from track to track. It flexes everything from fuzzy power pop choruses on "Crossed That Line" and "It's Alive!" to a warm country twang on "Morning Zoo" to mournful folk on the titular track. After more than ten years and four studio albums, The Window finally captures Ratboys as they were always meant to be heard--expansive while still intimate, audacious while still tender--the
sound of four friends operating as a single, cohesive unit.

Minor Science—aka UK-born, Berlin-based musician Angus Finlayson—makes his Balmat debut with Absent Friends Vol. III, the third installment in a shape-shifting series across a variety of formats and platforms. And with it, he pushes forward his vision of ambient music as neither static vista or merely mood-setting atmosphere, but rather a dynamic matrix of textures, sensations, and even rhythms.

The first two Absent Friends—a 2014 set for Blowing Up the Workshop, and a 2017 cassette and web player for Whities (now AD93)—were hybrid affairs, part DJ mix and part collage, mostly featuring music made by other people. Then, in 2020-21, Finlayson developed the project into a live show of his own material. Armed with hundreds of bespoke stems created in his studio—idiosyncratic FX chains, feedback loops through cheap rack gear, heavily post-processed field recordings, found voices, etc.—he would improvise on four CDJs, mixer, FX, and live synths, extending techniques he learned as a club DJ into a live context, accompanied by visuals by Stockholm-based artist Paul Witherden.

Absent Friends Vol. III is an album of studio versions of the music developed for the live show. But in Minor Science’s world, even a category as simple as “studio versions” is slightly opaque. “Most of these tracks weren’t ‘composed’ in the studio,” Finlayson explains: “The sounds started out as stems and source material for the live show, and might not have been intended to go together—but then through performance, they settled into shapes that worked. I then recreated those performances in the studio.” That organic process of ideation and realization might help explain the unusual coherence of the album, in which sounds and textures flow seamlessly from one to the next, sometimes seeming to stand still, and sometimes looping back. There are virtually no melodies, few recognizable motifs or riffs, yet the eight-track album nevertheless moves with a distinctive logic and a determined sense of purpose, from the frozen-in-time shimmer of the opening “Introduction” through the early cuts’ studies of space and light; from the seemingly autobiographical “Summer Diary” through the rushing trance (yes, trance) arpeggios of “Contingency” and on to the dulcet denouement of the closing “Gather Your Party (Dispersed Mix).”

“Orlando Furioso is a haunting, one-of-a-kind statement, from an important new voice in improvised music.” - Steve Lehman

“…imagining instruments that haven’t been invented yet: space harps, cosmic gamelan, Venusian banjo. It’s the purest distillation of Atria’s musical language, simultaneously grounded and unearthly.” - Stewart Smith for The Wire (November 2022)

“Making liberal use of microtonal harmony and hypnotic, ostinato rhythms – as well as the occasional stylistic smash-cut, reminiscent of John Zorn – Orlando Furioso announced itself on Wednesday as a punchy, creative force on the New York scene. (…) Atria’s rhythms had a welcoming, social propulsion, and the microtonality of his writing for keyboard proposed an individual – even insular – language.” - Seth Colter Walls for The New York Times.

Early European composers felt that their work reflected in its structure the divine nature of the material world. Via tuning, form, and contrapuntal alchemy, these musicians sought to illuminate and edify the complex and perfect order of existence. The music recorded here also reflects the contours of an ordered world, but it is no place any of us has ever visited. By assembling far-flung building blocks from the detritus of a 21st-century musical vocabulary, Orlando Furioso brings the listener into a bizarre new cosmos. The result is deeply expressive music that speaks not with the voice of a narrator or memoirist, but with that of a cartographer.

Like a science-fiction Dante, the listener is taken on a tour of many diverse and colorful provinces of an alien world. Though each composition references its own set of real-world musical locales (from the Andes to Indonesia to Italy to New Orleans), they are bound by stylistic consistency into a coherent, continuous geography. Permeating this world is an uncompromising commitment to microtonal harmony, rhythmic intensity, and an ability to deploy the esoteric (Nicola Vicentino's notorious 31-tone temperament) and the head-smackingly obvious (a surprise djent breakdown) with equal conviction. Though Vicente's compositions are steering the ship, serious recognition is due to all the players on the record for their ability to meet these demands.

Our omnivorous musical diets offer real abundance. They enrich our craft by providing access to limitless approaches from which to choose - more masters to study, traditions to absorb, and techniques to hone than is possible in multiple lifetimes. They can also inflict heavy and often contradictory burdens of influence. When every corner of the map has been charted, it becomes difficult to find a new direction in which to travel. One solution I hope to see more often is the one pursued on this record: breaking down distinct musical worlds into component parts and reassembling them into a language. When completed with precision and with no stone left unturned, the seams between the pieces vanish and the listener is deposited somewhere beautiful and strange, left to assign their sensations meanings of their own. - Mat Muntz

Orlando Furioso is led by Vicente and features David Acevedo, David Leon, Andrew Boudreau, Alec Goldfarb, Daniel Hass, Simón Willson, and Niña Tormenta. Orlando Furioso celebrated its release at Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn, NY, as a part of Wet Ink Ensemble's 24th Season opening concert, a performance which The New York Times heralded as "virtuosic", "punchy, creative" and "even revelatory."

Winner of the Deutscher Jazz Preis: Best International Debut Album 2023

In 1972, a foursome of design students set out to make a record. This was, in many ways, a strictly creative endeavor. The quartet — composed of Dave Pescod, Alan Lewis, Phil Rawle, and Ted Rockley — were all trained, not as musicians, but as creatives. Art school heavyweights, the four were well-versed in the methodology of intentional experimentation, in the delicate balance of pushing the limits without completely unmooring oneself from a guiding creative intention. Emboldened by a high-brow familiarity with thoughtful experimentation and all the non-conviction of non-musicians, Bowes Road Band’s stint in the world of popular music yielded a record that is as much mind-melting as it is a direct product of its time. Their sprawling LP “Back in the HCA” embodies the exigence “art for art’s sake,” but it is for art’s sake that this record, however off the deep end it seems to travel (hear: “Doctor, Doctor”), remains a unified, and stunning, body of work. The LP’s do-ityourself garage rock noisemaking meets highfalutin creative processes. “Back in the HCA” is warbling psychedelic freakout (“Two Fingers,” “Doctor, Doctor”), Donovan-esque English countryside folk stylings (“Inside My Head,” “Goodbye to Rosie”), and avant-garde jazz improvisions (“Grass is Grass,” “Tomorrow’s Truth”) in one luminous release.

Originally an 9-track LP, Jakarta, Uno Loop, and Bowes Road Band decided to mine the six most cohesive tracks for the reissue, though the extras may be released somewhere down the line. Cohesion efforts aside, “Back in the HCA” stands alone in its singular conception of a genre-bending continuum — it evades definition. That said, the LP can easily be situated in the sonic environment in which it was conceived. By the end of the 60s, England was crawling with blues-based rock outfits that were starting to venture into prog rock territory. You can hear this popular dint cast over the folkier side of the LP. But Bowes Road Band was armed with their non-musicianship: they existed completely liberated from the motivating yet ultimately paralyzing lust for stardom. Enjoying this liberation, Bowes Road Band was utterly free to make noise. This freedom meant drawn out sax interludes amidst sweetly folk stylings (“Grass is Grass”) and Shaggs-like fuzzed-out freakouts that spiral into a void (Doctor, Doctor). This freedom also meant straight-forward tuneful cuts like “Goodbye Rosie” that conspicuously introduce heavily distorted auto-organ accompaniment mid-track amidst poignant lyricism. Bowes Road Band crafts a unified sound and then cracks it open.

With a completely off-the-radar status, Bowes Road Band could only press 50 copies of the record — 10 for each of them and 10 for the school. The band’s lifespan was to end there, or so they thought. “Back in the HCA” was the accidental fruit of a Berlin flea market treasure hunt by Jannis Stürtz, DJ and co-founder of Habibi Funk and Jakarta Records. After finding and sharing the LP with a few colleagues, Stürtz managed to get in touch with the band, get ahold of the master tapes collecting dust in Ted Rockley’s attic, and start the reissuing process. The record is still adorned with its original cover art designed by Alan Pescod, both reminiscent of bygone school days and the Zoom calls of yesterday — in short, reunion. Its re-discovery was happenstance and ought to be listened to as such. That is, “Back in the HCA” was not made to be listened to on a broad scale, or, at least, was not made with this goal in mind; it is neither in its time nor of its time. Of course, the group explicitly cites the folk tunes of the English countryside, the distorted rock groups that reigned during the record’s conception, and the fringes of psychedelic music that only the uber-underground might recognize (e.g., “Dreaming of Alice”). Yet still with these obvious influences, “Back in the HCA” always existed beyond the domain of both traditional musicianship and conventional commodification. Bowes Road Band’s DIY musicality beams through in technicolor across “Back in the HCA.” The vinyl includes an 8-page booklet detailing the albums creation and interviews with the band.

Lead single “Grass is Grass,” out July 14 along with album pre-order, encapsulates the record’s range: the track unfurls into a sprawling sax-driven trip following a sundrenched, Donovan-esque intro w/ lyrics “naively about parks and gardens, not marijuana!” The keyed-down folk cut “Goodbye to Rosie” is single 2 and elevates stripped-down acoustics with golden tinges, out August 4th. Focus track “Tomorrow’s Truth” constructs the fuzzed-out underbelly of acid folk. Listen for echoes of late Beatles, Mark Fry, and Donovan (if they were armed by an unshakabele willful naiveté). Like Sgt. Pepper’s on a shoestring budget—take a trip to the underground with LP “Back in the HCA,” available everywhere physically and digitally on September 1st via Jakarta Records and Uno Loop.

Besides online promotion from label profiles, the album will be further promoted by external agencies within the UK and US.

Doppel-LP im Klappcover mit zwei bedruckten Innersleeves, 140 Gramm Vinyl. Was tun, wenn die Welt stehen bleibt? März 2020 ist der Moment, als die deutsche Schauspielerin Melanie Wiegmann auf der kleinen maltesischen Insel Gozo landet, um dort ihren Lebensgefährten, den Musiker Carl Carlton, zu besuchen. Pandemie, Quarantäne, Reisebeschränkungen - nichts geht mehr. Carl, international vernetzter und bekannter Rockgitarrist, ist gezwungen, sämtliche musikalischen Projekte auf Eis zu legen. Auch für Melanie wird die Reise zur Zäsur. Sie bricht Brücken ab und verlässt die laufende Produktion der ARD-Telenovela "Sturm der Liebe", mit der sie zum Star wurde. Aus ihrem ursprünglich geplanten Vier-Tage-Trip werden schließlich drei Jahre. Das Paar nutzt die Zwangspause auf der Mittelmeerinsel, um sich der Musik zu widmen. Im Vordergrund stehen der Spaß und die gemeinsame Liebe zu den Songs, an eine kommerzielle Verwertung denkt niemand. Der rote Faden, der sämtliche Songs verbindet: das ewige Thema Liebe - mit allen Schattierungen. Melanie und Carl entwickeln Arrangements und stellen fest, dass nicht nur ihre Stimmen, sondern auch ihre Geschmäcker harmonieren. Das Great Americana Songbook bildet die Grundlage. Neben Genre-Klassikern wie "Love Hurts" und "If I Needed You" kommen auch die Beatles ("Here, There And Everywhere") und Perlen aus den Katalogen großer Songwriter wie Leonard Cohen ("Dance Me To The End Of Love"), Tom Petty ("Wildflowers") und John Prine ("Long Monday") oder Bob Dylan ("I'll Be Your Baby Tonight") ins Spiel. Als Reisen endlich wieder möglich ist, packen die beiden die Koffer, um Carls weltweit verzweigte Musikerfamilie zu besuchen. Die Aufnahmen der Songs entstehen in Irland, Berlin und schließlich auf Malta. Den Feinschliff für das Album gab es in New York von Mastering-Legende Fred Kevorkian. Mit "Glory Of Love" ist ein warmherziges musikalisches Tagebuch entstanden, das mit eigenwilliger Songauswahl, unprätentiösen Arrangements und natürlichem Charme überzeugt. Die vielleicht schönste Überraschung: Hier haben sich nicht nur zwei Seelen, sondern auch zwei wundervoll harmonierende Stimmen gefunden.

A group of five talented musicians from the northeast, led by the songwriting genius of Alan Hull. Lindisfarne were formed in 1968 when Hull joined Simon Cowe on guitar, Ray Jackson on mandolin and vocals, Rod Clements on bass and Ray Laidlaw on drums. Building a fearsome live reputation, by 1970 they had been signed to Tony Stratton Smith's Charisma label.
Their first album, Nicely Out Of Tune, contained Lady Eleanor and set up an eager audience for Fog On The Tyne, an album of tremendous light and shade. Known for the Rod Clements- written, Ray Jackson- sung Meet Me On The Corner, and Alan Hull's anthemic title track. The album succeeds in creating a mythical, twilight northeast, from the cover design inwards; of city lights, ragmen, sausage rolls, tattered tweeds and having a "wet on the wall." Fog On The Tyne is the sound of a band at both a commercial and creative peak. The musicianship is second to none, watertight, yet relaxed and freewheeling, recorded at London's Trident Studios by Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen producer Bob Johnston and Bowie engineer Ken Scott.

• This is an unusual album in the catalogue of Ornette Coleman, and one that passes by most critics. It is however a unique insight into the ‘free jazz’ pioneer’s way of working in the early 70s. Recorded at his large loft space in downtown New York which inspired a whole scene of experimental musicians who were locked out of playing established venues.

• The music is a romp showing Ornette playing trumpet as well as saxophone. His quartet which featured second saxophonist Dewey Redman alongside long term cohorts Ed Blackwell and Charlie Haden prove to be the perfect foil for this legendary set.

• This is the first vinyl reissue in nearly 20 years and utilises a fresh 24/96 transfer from the original production master.

After Miss Machine, Dillinger Escape Plan fans were divided. Many of the folks who were attached to the screaming mathematical metal of Calculating Infinity bailed on the band, disapproving of the experimental musical direction and the meathead appearance of new singer/screamer Greg Puciato. Open-minded listeners were excited about the progressive journey they were taking and many critics hailed the group as a true innovator of metalcore. Ire Works succeeds in many of the same ways that their previous album did, while branching out creatively. They continue to toy with technical metal, blistering hardcore, jazz breaks, and post-punk, but here they evolve again by adding more twists and turns with additional electronic elements. While the merging of too many styles in hardcore can make for a convoluted result (see Avenged Sevenfold's self-titled release), the added instruments and genre changeups enhance the result rather than acting as ornamental distractions. Edgy Aphex Twin-style drill'n'bass drum breaks and stretched and squeezed electro blips feel strangely at home next to the psychotic time-signature changes and manic riffs, especially on the tracks "Sick on Sunday," "Dead as History," and "When Acting as a Wave." Violins, pianos, and trumpets sit nicely in the mix, and the group's willingness to take chances leads to stunning artistic endeavors rather than stale attempts at crossing genres just for the sake of being clever. Original vocalist Dimitri Minakakis makes an appearance, as does Mastodon guitarist Brent Hinds, but the most notable inclusion is drummer Gil Sharone, who proves himself an expert at picking up the slack after the departure of founding member Chris Pennie to play in Coheed and Cambria. Undoubtedly, this act added anger to fuel the fire of their heavier numbers. "82588," "Fix Your Face," and "Party Smasher" are as wicked and manic as their most difficult earlier stuff; conversely, the melodic hooks and falsetto of "Black Bubblegum" and the watery ambience of "Mouth of Ghosts" balance out the album nicely. It can be inaccessible and terrifying all at once, but in a genre overly saturated with formulaic groups, Ire Works is a true standout. If DEP aren't careful and continue down this innovative path, they could easily be labeled the Radiohead of metalcore

. It started in a cafe in Chico, California, with a flier, covered in glitter, wires, feathers, and assorted melted items, with a three-word advertisement: “Noise person wanted.” It wasn’t a sign. It was a sample. A tiny piece lifted from the visionary environment that the band XDS would continue building over the next couple of decades, hoarding an eclectic stockpile of collage materials/influences/approaches for assembling psychedelic dance-punk jams played with homemade instruments, blown-out samples, off-kilter drumming and dub baselines. Shoko Horikawa had come from Japan to (the small, music-crazy college town) Chico for school, and responded to Jesse Hall’s mysterious flier and a pitch to collaborate on making interesting sounds. The partnership would end up featuring her syncopated polyrhythmic drums alongside his vocals (through a duct tape-and-PVC-pipe mic) and custom-built Guitar-o-bass, plus synths/samplers and various noise-making devices. The two-piece Experimental Dental School eventually morphed into XDS as the duo moved the operation from Chico to Oakland to Portland and back to Chico, touring the world (playing alongside the likes of Deerhoof and other innovators) and releasing 11 recordings (on Cochon Records, German label TCWGA, etc.) as they went. On the new XDS album, Bicycle Ripper, the band’s genre-bending roots are as deep as ever, but the goal now is to be less “noise” people and more “fun” people. The songs are weird yet cohesive, with jittery grooves and inventive hooks. Throw a dart at the album and hit “Hot Panther, Cold Moon” for one random sample: an unrelenting fuzzed-out bass dances with a insistent drums; a sharp turn into sparse tin-can-guitar break; then a return to the dance floor with a bonus overdriven bass riff and full-throttle drums. The Panther stays hot whether she’s under the “hot hot sun” or the “cold cold moon.” It’s all very irresistible and, yes, really really fun

Curren$y & Harry Fraud's fifth joint project - 'The Director’s Cut' featuring: Snoop Dogg, Larry June, Styles P & Trippie Redd. Just two months following the release of their fourth joint album, The OutRunners, Curren$y and Harry Fraud returned with a brand new project called The Director’s Cut. The longtime cohorts latest project features 9 tracks with guest appearances by Trippie Red, Larry June, Snoop Dogg and Styles P. Initially, the artists intended for The Director’s Cut to be a deluxe version of The Outrunners, but once they went to work they ended up with a standalone project. Curren$y describes the connection between The Director’s Cut and The OutRunners best: “It’s not a deluxe album, it’s the director’s cut of an underground film that garnered a nice bit of mainstream notoriety, with alternate endings, added scenes, secret characters and verses unlocked!

In the past, Mapache recording sessions have been pretty laid-back
affairs, with friends coming and going, the sessions starting and stopping
at the band's discretion--as relaxed a process as the immaculately sunny
vibes that their four albums would suggest - But on their dynamic and
ambitious fifth album of cosmic-folk, Swinging Stars, Sam Blasucci and
Clay Finch decided to take a trip and hunker down somewhere
particularly special
"It's a pretty impactful place," Finch says of the Panoramic House, the artist
retreat where Swinging Stars was recorded. "It's kind of dramatic. It's a castle-y
building on a hill, way up overlooking the Bay."
Located in Stinson Beach in Marin County, California, the Panoramic House has
recently hosted acts like My Morning Jacket, the War on Drugs, and Cate Le Bon,
and was the ideal combination of scenic beauty and self-imposed confinement to
allow Mapache to settle in for their most cohesive album yet.
"That environment yields itself to a higher level of focus because everybody's
together for a week," says Finch, explaining that the band stayed there during the
process, sharing every bit of their time and energy on a shared vision. "We were
all captive. No one could escape," he laughs.
Swinging Stars, an album of calm, second-nature swagger, is the natural result of
a band that's existed in one form or another for its founders' entire adult lives.
Finch and Blasucci first met as students at La Canada High School, just north of
Los Angeles, where they both had a guitar class: "There wasn't much supervision
or anything," remembers Blasucci. "It was really nice. And we got to just play
guitars together."

Seine Stärke ist ein Songwriting das musikalisch wie poetisch kratzt und schabt: am amerikanischen Traum, an dessen Wirklichkeit und den Menschen die ihn bevölkern. Immer wieder wurde seine spröde Musik und einfühlsamen Texte mit denen von Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed und Bob Dylan verglichen und somit Gewicht verliehen. Zu großer Bekanntheit führte das nicht, Simon Joyner bleibt ein outsider mit seinem Loner-folk, aber für die, die ihn entdecken bietet er ein Kraft von rauher Schönheit. Conor Obers von Bright Eyes nennt Joyner, der seit 1990 seine dunklen Americana Songs veröffentlicht, einen entscheidenden Einfluß. Simon Joyner's neuestes Album gerät noch dunkler und eindringlicher. Sein Thema hier ist Isolation, und er übernimmt es gleich auch als Grundlage für seine Produktion Ihm war es wichtig, dass die beteiligten Musiker allesamt alleine waren um ihre jeweiligen Parts zu finden. Die Abgeschiedenheit der einzelnen Musiker auf Songs From A Stolen Guitar bietet somit weniger Spontaneität vieler früherer Arbeiten von Joyner, führt aber zu einer Art Silberstreifeneffekt: Joyners Songs, die hier sorgfältiger und vielleicht absichtsvoller produziert wurden als auf jedem seiner früheren Alben, kommen viel klarer durch und stellen sowohl seine schillernden Wortspiele als auch seine klare Vision in den Vordergrund. Ein Kritiker bringt einen Vergleich zu Neil Young und meinte "Wenn (sein 2012 Album) 'Ghosts' sein 'Tonight's the Night' war - zornig, nackt und bodenlos - dann könnte sich 'Songs From A Stolen Guitar' als sein Harvest erweisen." Songs From A Stolen Guitar wurde in verschiedenen Städten aufgenommen. Joyner nahm seinen Gesang und seine Gitarre live in Omaha auf; Bassist Wil Hendrix fügte seine Parts zu Hause in San Francisco hinzu, Michael Krassner nahm seine Gitarren- und Klavier-Overdubs zu Hause in Phoenix auf, und Schlagzeuger/Percussionist Ryan Jewell nahm in Colorado auf. Dieser musikalische Kettenbrief machte sich dann auf den Weg zurück nach Omaha, wo David Nance (Gitarren und Backing Vocals), Ben Brodin (Orgel und Vibraphon) und Megan Siebe (Bratsche und Backing Vocals) - getrennt voneinander - ihre jeweiligen Beiträge einspielten. Dieses Vorgehen zahlt sich aus. Die "virtuelle" Band spielt eine unterstützende, aber komplementäre Rolle und erzeugt immer das richtige Maß an Spannung, um diese emotionsgeladenen Geschichten zu begleiten und zu umhüllen. Das Zusammenspiel ist einfühlsam und kohärent, auch wenn es aus geografischer Entfernung und Abgeschiedenheit zusammengefügt wurde und oft wie Musik klingt, die durch den Nebel eines Herbstmorgens gefiltert wurde. Doch wenn es um Simon Joyner-Platten geht, zahlt man sein Ticket, um großartige Songs zu hören, und auch in dieser Kategorie enttäuscht Songs From A Stolen Guitar nicht. Eins der seltenen Alben, das nach dem klingt, worum es geht: die Kluft zwischen Einsamkeit und Alleinsein, die Grenzen zwischen Liebe und Hingabe, der Unterschied zwischen dem Tornado und dem, was er hinterlässt.

Translucent Dark Red & Black Marbled Colored Vinyl. Seine Stärke ist ein Songwriting das musikalisch wie poetisch kratzt und schabt: am amerikanischen Traum, an dessen Wirklichkeit und den Menschen die ihn bevölkern. Immer wieder wurde seine spröde Musik und einfühlsamen Texte mit denen von Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed und Bob Dylan verglichen und somit Gewicht verliehen. Zu großer Bekanntheit führte das nicht, Simon Joyner bleibt ein outsider mit seinem Loner-folk, aber für die, die ihn entdecken bietet er ein Kraft von rauher Schönheit. Conor Obers von Bright Eyes nennt Joyner, der seit 1990 seine dunklen Americana Songs veröffentlicht, einen entscheidenden Einfluß. Simon Joyner's neuestes Album gerät noch dunkler und eindringlicher. Sein Thema hier ist Isolation, und er übernimmt es gleich auch als Grundlage für seine Produktion. Ihm war es wichtig, dass die beteiligten Musiker allesamt alleine waren um ihre jeweiligen Parts zu finden. Die Abgeschiedenheit der einzelnen Musiker auf Songs From A Stolen Guitar bietet somit weniger Spontaneität vieler früherer Arbeiten von Joyner, führt aber zu einer Art Silberstreifeneffekt: Joyners Songs, die hier sorgfältiger und vielleicht absichtsvoller produziert wurden als auf jedem seiner früheren Alben, kommen viel klarer durch und stellen sowohl seine schillernden Wortspiele als auch seine klare Vision in den Vordergrund. Ein Kritiker bringt einen Vergleich zu Neil Young und meinte "Wenn (sein 2012 Album) 'Ghosts' sein 'Tonight's the Night' war - zornig, nackt und bodenlos - dann könnte sich 'Songs From A Stolen Guitar' als sein Harvest erweisen." Songs From A Stolen Guitar wurde in verschiedenen Städten aufgenommen. Joyner nahm seinen Gesang und seine Gitarre live in Omaha auf; Bassist Wil Hendrix fügte seine Parts zu Hause in San Francisco hinzu, Michael Krassner nahm seine Gitarren- und Klavier-Overdubs zu Hause in Phoenix auf, und Schlagzeuger/Percussionist Ryan Jewell nahm in Colorado auf. Dieser musikalische Kettenbrief machte sich dann auf den Weg zurück nach Omaha, wo David Nance (Gitarren und Backing Vocals), Ben Brodin (Orgel und Vibraphon) und Megan Siebe (Bratsche und Backing Vocals) - getrennt voneinander - ihre jeweiligen Beiträge einspielten. Dieses Vorgehen zahlt sich aus. Die "virtuelle" Band spielt eine unterstützende, aber komplementäre Rolle und erzeugt immer das richtige Maß an Spannung, um diese emotionsgeladenen Geschichten zu begleiten und zu umhüllen. Das Zusammenspiel ist einfühlsam und kohärent, auch wenn es aus geografischer Entfernung und Abgeschiedenheit zusammengefügt wurde und oft wie Musik klingt, die durch den Nebel eines Herbstmorgens gefiltert wurde. Doch wenn es um Simon Joyner-Platten geht, zahlt man sein Ticket, um großartige Songs zu hören, und auch in dieser Kategorie enttäuscht Songs From A Stolen Guitar nicht. Eins der seltenen Alben, das nach dem klingt, worum es geht: die Kluft zwischen Einsamkeit und Alleinsein, die Grenzen zwischen Liebe und Hingabe, der Unterschied zwischen dem Tornado und dem, was er hinterlässt.

Big Crown Records is proud to present the debut full length offering from Les Imprimés, Rêverie. The stirring and ethereal sounds of Les Imprimés have been making fans of anyone who hears them since their first 7" single hit the speakers. Morten Martens is the man behind the band. Born, raised, and working in Kristiansand, Norway, he keeps a low prole while making his heart felt, highly infectious, and unique music. This album is a long time coming for Martens and it is sure to make him a name to be reckoned with. The first thing you notice listening to Les Imprimés is the high level of musician-ship. Martens plays nearly every instrument on the recordings and handles the production and arranging. He has been making records for decades, winning a Spellemann Award (aka, the Norwegian Grammy) in 2006 for producing a HipHop album as well as getting nominations across three other genres. While awards and accolades speak to the level of his talent, this new album really shows who he is an artist on his own terms. Moving away from being a hired gun on the touring scene naturally led him to start doing more studio work. Slowly collecting gear and getting more experi-ence behind the boards he built his own studio on the island of Odderoya and was making a living playing with and recording other people's music. As the story goes, after those sessions would end he would work on his own project into the wee hours of the night. From these late night sessions, Les Imprimés was born and Rêverie began to take shape. However, "it wasn't until COVID, when things locked down, that I was really able to nd the time to focus on Les Imprimés" Morten says about creating and leading his own solo project. "It was a scary time. But I knew I had to do something with it." He took the sum of his inuences, combined them with his own vibe and got busy writing the music, playing the instruments, and singing the songs. "It's soul music, but I don't exactly have the soul voice," Morten explains humbly. "But I do it my own way, in a way that's mine. "It is his sound, his fingerprint, his sensibility, that makes his music hard to put in a box. The album showcases both Martens' range and his ability to make a cohesive album. The lead single "Falling Away" starts with a raw drum break and turns into a lushly arranged tune that paints the picture of love when it slips away. On "Still Here" he professes his resilience through life's twists and turns over a thundering track that puts a new spin on the B side ballad genre. Songs like "You" and "Our Love" mix tones from 60s and 70s Soul with arrangement nods to Doo Wop records while Martens' lyrics and delivery leave you singing the melodies long after they finish. "Love & Flowers" finds Martens in a moment of clarity with a song that ts the niche sub genre of happy break up tunes, the four on the floor track will move the dancefloor or while the message will resonate with anyone who put too much effort into the wrong situation in their lives. However, it is songs like "Muse" and "Chess" that really encapsulate the uniqueness of Les Imprimés as they push the boundaries of genre, one a profession of love for music and the other a cover of an electronic record respectively. Martens' lyrics, emotion, and delivery truly make the whole thing come together and stand out from any of his peers. There's an infectiousness and a pop sensibility in the writing that is done with the utmost class and taste giving Les Imprimés the rare quality of immediate attraction that only deepens the more you listen.

"Don't Stop" is the third album retrospectively released by Ghia. As the subtitle "Early Works & Artefacts 1984-1987" implies, it features some of their earliest compositions as well as tracks that were recorded during the same period as their "Curaçao Blue" LP.

The album is a fusion of diverse music styles. Listeners will delight in a range of genres, including electro, funk, soul, jazz-funk, synth pop, and even rap/hip-hop, all woven together as a cohesive work that remains mostly instrumental. As a whole, "Don't Stop" represents Ghia's funkiest and most experimental release to date. Notably, the LP features a rap version of Hermann Hesse's controversial German poem "Armer Teufel am Morgen nach dem Maskenball" ("Poor Devil the Morning After the Costume Ball") from 1926, accompanied by a drum machine rhythm and funky guitar. This poem depicts a person who drank too much the night before, telling the story and describing his hangover. The title track "Don't Stop" and the thrilling minimal electro-funk tune "3 A.M. at Moëf Gaga" both evoke old-school electro influences. The latter references the Spanish discotheque Moëf Gaga, located on the Balearic coast, which the dynamic duo of Lutz Boberg and Frank Simon frequented during their 1980s holidays. While the exact music played at 3 A.M. is unknown, listening to Ghia's track will undoubtedly capture the mood of the place.

One of the key tracks of the album is "Message From The Other Side", which could easily be noted as one of the nicest European synth-funk instrumental pieces ever. The track is based on a sick synth bass line, sparkled with DX7 chord hits, funky guitar, and a delightful "marimba" solo in the last third. The solo was actually played on Boberg's keyboard, using a special sound cartridge. This particular track had to be edited and technically revised by Marian Tone and DJ Scientist as the existing demo version of the song could not be used as is. With its stunning groove, this track will surely be a DJ's favorite.

Listening to the complete album, there is more of Boberg's keyboard wizardry: could you believe that the trumpet solo on "Jump In The Water" as well as the short but stunning slap bass solo on "Talk Too Much" were both played by on the DX7? However, this new release, unlike the jazzy "Curaçao Blue", is not about solos or virtuous playing - it clearly shows the duo's direction towards more electronic composition and clear song structures. The versions of "September Garden", "When The Rain is Falling" as well as "Talk Too Much" are actually instrumental mixdowns of vocal songs. And again, we get a blissful take of "Close To You", here a version from 1986. This soulful jazz-funk ballad could already be heard on "Curaçao Blue" while the final vocal version with singer Lisa Ohm can be found on the recently released "This Is" LP. This shows that the Ghia composers, Boberg and Simon, were perfectionists - tracks were reworked again and again, making them better and better.

The album was mastered and restored with great care, and we are pleased to provide you with a perfect example of mid 1980s home-recording pleasures, tinged with a youthful spirit and providing a sound that cannot be recaptured anymore nowadays. Alongside "This Is" and "Curacao Blue" it should be another perfect addition to any 80s groove collection as well as a great pick for DJs that love and play disco, leftfield electro and funk. The LP is limited to 500 copies.

With his sophomore full-length album, Born Hot, Chris Farren paired polished, up-beat pop songs with lyrics full of self-examination and insecurity, all while developing a newfound sense of humor when it came to promoting himself. Stereogum called it “a tongue-in-cheek exploration of ideas of confidence and self-loathing," while The Atlantic featured it on their “Best Albums of 2019” list.

On his third full-length album, Doom Singer, Farren injects his latest work with a newfound sense of power and cohesion. Collaborating for the first time with outside drummer Frankie Impastato (Macseal), Farren's songs take on a whole new dimensionality, with Impastato's live drums bringing a fresh spontaneity to the tracks. Doom Singer marks another significant milestone in Farren's career as it is the first time he collaborated with a producer, multi-instrumentalist Melina Duterte (Jay Som, Bachelor, Routine). Her masterful production experience adds a layer of sophistication to Farren's sound, creating a rich and multi- dimensional sonic landscape that takes his music to new heights. With Duterte's keen ear and meticulous attention to detail, the album resonates with a level of clarity and depth that showcases Farren's songwriting and vocal abilities in a whole new light.

Chris Farren’s music has been praised in outlets such as MTV, Stereogum, and The Atlantic, who describes his music as having “bright-eyed hooks, sparkly orchestration, and tight songwriting.” With numerous world tours alongside artists such as Jeff Rosenstock, The Gaslight Anthem, Laura Stevenson, and others, Farren has been building a dedicated following of fans who connect with his introspective lyrics and infectious pop sensibilities.

Rare 1986 Funk/Soul From Alabama.

Originally released as a private pressed cassette tape only.

First Time On Vinyl.

Released in collaboration with the Numero Group.

180g BLACK vinyl limited to 500 copies w/obi strip. Non-Returnable.

Armed with little more than his Peavey T-60 guitar and a Jumbo Fuzz pedal, Errol Stubbs and his bar-band cohorts cranked out a self-released tape of funked-up disco soul in 1986. With no label or distribution to speak of, Errol would simply put on his best suit and sell the cassettes by hand. The tape languished into obscurity…until now!

The story of Errol Stubbs begins in Birmingham, Alabama in 1959. The youngest of five, he was surrounded by music as a child–his aunt taught piano at Daniel Payne College while his older brother, Avery Beavers, was an accomplished jazz trumpeter. Under the guidance of Avery, Errol started playing trumpet at the age of nine, though he gravitated toward songwriting and quickly picked up the guitar. Inspired by blues greats the likes of Albert King, Buddy Guy, and Little Milton, 12-year-old Errol began mimicking the sounds that filled southern airwaves. As a teenager, he played at barbecues, fish fries, and dive bars across the Magic City. After a brief stint at Jefferson State studying music, Errol’s passion for songwriting beckoned him away from the classroom.

Stubbs bounced around bar bands before settling on a live lineup and saving enough dough to take his vision to the recording studio. Over the course of two days, his well-rehearsed band recorded Turning it Out mostly live to tape at the Sound Of Birmingham Studio. Located on Birmingham’s east side, the state-of-the-art studio kept the lights on by recording commercial jingles but was more than happy to open their doors to local talent.

Taking notes from guitar god Ernie Isley and funk legend Rick James, the resulting recordings are drenched in cosmic phaser-fuzz guitar work, slapping bass lines, and sexual disco innuendos. Big brother Avery lends a hand on Clavinet for “Sweat,” while studio owner/engineer Don Mosley adds a tasteful dose of Moog synthesizer across a handful of cuts.

Soon after the Sound Of Birmingham sessions, Errol released the private pressed EP “Dancin’ Fancy,” b/w “Spaced Out On Your Love,” the latter of which was featured on Numero Group’s 2019 compilation Visible and Invisible Persons Distributed In Space.

The seven-song cassette Turning It Out was sold in local record stores and from night club stages, but only a few copies made their way out of Birmingham.

The pre-cursor to Mid-Air Thief's cult-acclaimed album Crumbling,
Gongjoon Doduk exhibits a distinct universality, merging disparate
sounds and styles into a cohesive, electronic-infused folk amalgam that tactfully blurs the lines between organic and synthetic
Listeners are led through enrapturing passages of swirling melodies underscored with eloquent plucks, strums, and bursts of bubbly glitches. Individual phrases drift into one another as if in a dream, cohered by entrancing hooks and vocal soundscapes. Gongjoon Doduk is a compelling accomplishment of both composition and production, bending as it does to its unique contours of consonance and dissonance, always resolving to a place of calm and beauty.

Jimi Prasad Orchestra is the next stage in the evolution of visionary artist
Jimi Prasad
The Orchestra is a unique project, blending mixed art disciplines, featuring top
musicians from around the world including trumpet player Avishai Cohen,
keyboardist/ producer Rejoicer, cellist Esther Patricia Valladares Amador and
more. The debut album is due to be released in 2023 on Raw Tapes Records.

This Moment' - Shakti's first new studio album in more than 45 years - is
a work of immense depth and radiant optimism
With John McLaughlin (guitar, guitar synth) and Zakir Hussain (tabla) joined by
vocalist Shankar Mahadevan, violinist Ganesh Rajagopalan, and percussionist
Selvaganesh Vinayakram, the Shakti of now is a powerfully dynamic collective,
defined by deft interplay, dazzling unison passages, extraordinarily dexterous
improvisations, and the ability to draw from a vast well of global traditions and,
miraculously, put them in conversation with one another.
As a cornerstone of what is now called World Music, the vision and virtuosity of
Shakti has inspired generations of musicians from around the world to explore
sonic hybrids once thought impossible. Born of the musical and spiritual
brotherhood shared by the revolutionary British guitarist and bandleader John
McLaughlin and master Indian percussionist Zakir Hussain, Shakti's soulful,
organic intermingling of Eastern and Western musical traditions has proven
transformative for both the band's members and its listeners. Fifty years after the
informal conversations and jam sessions that sparked the band into existence,
their music continues to resonate and evolve.
Despite the large gap in their studio discography, Shakti has persisted
intermittently over the years as a live proposition, releasing several concert
recordings. "Shakti is very much a 'live' band, " explains McLaughlin. "A part of the
problem with making a studio recording has always been the fact that we live on
different continents, and we all follow our individual careers – in addition to
working together in Shakti. 'This Moment' is the result of me calling everyone in
the fall of 2021 and persuading them to use today's recording technology to
realise it."
Recorded and mixed in the U.S., Monaco, India, and Great Britain, This Moment is
nevertheless cohesive, bound by the deeply held bond shared by the players - a
bond that is audibly apparent across the album's eight tracks.

These days, singer-songwriter and actor David Blue tends to be remembered only in relation to Bob Dylan. A member of the supporting cast in mid-60s Greenwich Village and The Rolling Thunder Revue. Yet to categorise Blue in this way is reductionist, and does him an injustice. He was something of an archetype of the 60s generation of Greenwich Village singer-songwriters. Yet, esteemed by his peers, he was overlooked. He released seven albums in a decade, and his acting career was shaping up when he died suddenly at the age of just 41. His passing was barely noted in the rock press, and in the subsequent years Blue was all but forgotten. Of late, though, that’s changed. His albums started to reappear on CD on small labels and, in 2020, both Rolling Stone and Mojo magazines published major reappraisals. Blue – at last – was getting the attention denied him in life.



It wasn’t until 1965 that Blue, as Dave Cohen, released his first recordings – three songs on Elektra’s Singer Songwriter Project. All betrayed a debt to pre-electric Dylan. But then again, so did much else coming out of Greenwich Village at the time. Elektra contracted Blue to do his own album, and in 1966 David Blue was released – his first recording to appear under that name. Electric folk rock with a garage band attitude, somewhat in debt to Highway 61, it didn’t sell well. Shortly after the album’s release Blue formed and toured with The American Patrol, a four-piece rock band, recording an album for Elektra that was never released.



Now, for the first time, Hanky Panky and Mapache release those historical abandoned American Patrol recordings, along with the three tracks included on Elektra’s 1965 LP Singer Songwriter Project, as David Blue And The American Patrol The Lost 1967 Elektra Recordings & More and David Blue, his self-titled 1966 debut album, on two exclusive vinyl editions limited to 500 copies

PUBLIC INTEREST can do no wrong in our eyes and they held the door open for you again. This LP is even denser and fuller than their previous Between 12". If you like dark post-punk, you might like this, as much as we do. Synthy post-punk that surprises with every track. ETT is proud to bring the 2nd vinyl from this project out of Oakland featuring (or maybe even consisting entirely of?) a member of Marbled Eye. Marbled Eye’s recent recordings showcased their ability to write catchy post-punk tunes and this 8-song LP from Public Interest is the same level. While you’ll hear plenty of those memorable guitar lines that made the Marbled Eye tracks so great, the songs here feel snappier, more concerned with generating a pop-inspired forward momentum than stretching things out and floating in mid-air. The angular synth lines and mechanical rhythms are a nice counterpoint to those fluid guitar lines, imbuing Between with an irresistible tension. This is utterly brilliant. I don't have a favourite track because this record is just good and coherent in its integrity. Guitars sound ace, drums and bass are on point and the vocals give some pop shades that are never annoying. Really great enjoyable LP.

Rozi Plain’s 2019 ‘What A Boost’ is reissued on eco vinyl via Memphis Industries. The reissue is timely, following on from the breakthrough success of her 2023 album, ‘Prize’. ‘What A Boost’ was self-produced with the help of a long list of musical friends including Kate Stables, Jamie Whitby Coles, Neil Smith (all This Is The Kit), Chris Cohen, Joel Wästberg (Sir Was) and Sam Amidon.

Released in April 2015 on Lost Map, and featuring contributions from Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor, among others, her last album, ‘Friend’, was a deeply meaningful and wonderfully measured ode to memory, place, companionship and music’s remarkable power as an emotional salve.

Available for the first time on vinyl - a 20th anniversary release of The Mystic Chords Of Memory's seminal, unique DIY psych-folk debut. By Beachwood Sparks singer/songwriter Chris Gunst & Aislers Set's Jen Cohen. Mastered at Abbey Road. The seeds of this exquisite album are scattered among the tracks of Make The Cowboy Robots Cry - the LP Beachwood Sparks hung their hats on before a ten year break. A further step forward from west coast country psych towards something with folkier roots but new, mysterious and above all free. Chris and Jen's conjuring of magical, unforced, domestic spirituality. Recorded in a little wood cabin amongst the redwoods overlooking a running creek with a range of collected musical toys. Just give it 5 minutes once you’ve dropped the needle & you’ll be right there. Here’s Amanda Petrussich’s brilliant write up in Pitchfork - “With its soft melodies, sweet vocals, and scratchy DIY production, Mystic Chords of Memory is also an overwhelmingly intimate record, focused and domestic - much closer to Elliott Smith than former-benchmarks the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield…. The duo's wordy moniker was lifted from Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address, a lecture delivered in the spring of 1861 and boldly eternalised at the base of Mount Rushmore... Appropriately, the band's sound is just as archaic as a truly striking political speech: Gunst and Cohen blend tinkling bells, melodica, harp, keyboards, bits of samples, tinny drums, and strummy guitars, presenting a vaguely contemporary update on the British folk phenomenon of the late 1960s with more blips. Mystic Chords of Memory is a surprisingly coherent re-introduction to Gunst, and his professional coupling with Jen Cohen has proven both a freeing and inspired move.” Two decades later it’s obvious how seminal a record they conjured up. They forged a path that came to define the wave of US indie that followed for a while. In our opinion, the original has a natural, guileless, effortless beauty that trumps them all. Without a whiff of Starbucks. "Mystic chords of memory speech I interpreted the meaning as the underlying psyche fabric we are all creating on this land together. Jen and I thought it would be a great name to inspire our music together. This was really close to post 9/11 times and we were thinking about all of this and also wanting to improve our own contribution to the psychological fabric of the world.” Chis Gunst.

Available for the first time on vinyl - a 20th anniversary release of The Mystic Chords Of Memory's seminal, unique DIY psych-folk debut. By Beachwood Sparks singer/songwriter Chris Gunst & Aislers Set's Jen Cohen. Mastered at Abbey Road. The seeds of this exquisite album are scattered among the tracks of Make The Cowboy Robots Cry - the LP Beachwood Sparks hung their hats on before a ten year break. A further step forward from west coast country psych towards something with folkier roots but new, mysterious and above all free. Chris and Jen's conjuring of magical, unforced, domestic spirituality. Recorded in a little wood cabin amongst the redwoods overlooking a running creek with a range of collected musical toys. Just give it 5 minutes once you’ve dropped the needle & you’ll be right there. Here’s Amanda Petrussich’s brilliant write up in Pitchfork - “With its soft melodies, sweet vocals, and scratchy DIY production, Mystic Chords of Memory is also an overwhelmingly intimate record, focused and domestic - much closer to Elliott Smith than former-benchmarks the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield…. The duo's wordy moniker was lifted from Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address, a lecture delivered in the spring of 1861 and boldly eternalised at the base of Mount Rushmore... Appropriately, the band's sound is just as archaic as a truly striking political speech: Gunst and Cohen blend tinkling bells, melodica, harp, keyboards, bits of samples, tinny drums, and strummy guitars, presenting a vaguely contemporary update on the British folk phenomenon of the late 1960s with more blips. Mystic Chords of Memory is a surprisingly coherent re-introduction to Gunst, and his professional coupling with Jen Cohen has proven both a freeing and inspired move.” Two decades later it’s obvious how seminal a record they conjured up. They forged a path that came to define the wave of US indie that followed for a while. In our opinion, the original has a natural, guileless, effortless beauty that trumps them all. Without a whiff of Starbucks. "Mystic chords of memory speech I interpreted the meaning as the underlying psyche fabric we are all creating on this land together. Jen and I thought it would be a great name to inspire our music together. This was really close to post 9/11 times and we were thinking about all of this and also wanting to improve our own contribution to the psychological fabric of the world.” Chis Gunst.

Frontier's Edge is the new EP by the fiery, energetic and genre-defying group The Budos Band. After a two-decade run with the legendary Daptone Records, Frontier's Edge is the first new music from the group on the new label, Diamond West Records - run by The Budos' saxophonist Jared Tankel and guitarist Tom Brenneck. The Budos Band's departure from Daptone was on good terms; the split from their long-time home base was an organic result of the band's evolution. "It's just a natural growth," Brenneck says, admitting: "We're going further away from the sound of Daptone and into territory they probably wanted to stay away from." As a result, Frontier's Edge finds the group hungry, passionate and primed to charge into their next epoch newfound sense autonomy within the collective.

"We're a powerhouse in the studio; we can produce ourselves," Brenneck says proudly of a long process of self-containment. "I take the helm, but the band, they know what they want." As expected from The Budos Band, Frontier's Edge resists analysis; it represents the band as they are: a contained explosion.

You don't pick apart Frontier's Edge; you feel it all at once. "Somehow, we wrote six songs in two days," says The Budos' drummer, Brian Profilio. "Tom was able to take what we were doing and put it together in a cohesive manner." Whether this is your first rodeo with The Budos Band or you've been following them throughout their two-decade run, Frontier's Edge contains their musical universe - Afrobeat, Ethiopian music, proto-metal, any number of other streams - in microcosm.

Frontier's Edge is the new EP by the fiery, energetic and genre-defying group The Budos Band. After a two-decade run with the legendary Daptone Records, Frontier's Edge is the first new music from the group on the new label, Diamond West Records - run by The Budos' saxophonist Jared Tankel and guitarist Tom Brenneck. The Budos Band's departure from Daptone was on good terms; the split from their long-time home base was an organic result of the band's evolution. "It's just a natural growth," Brenneck says, admitting: "We're going further away from the sound of Daptone and into territory they probably wanted to stay away from." As a result, Frontier's Edge finds the group hungry, passionate and primed to charge into their next epoch newfound sense autonomy within the collective. "We're a powerhouse in the studio; we can produce ourselves," Brenneck says proudly of a long process of self-containment. "I take the helm, but the band, they know what they want." As expected from The Budos Band, Frontier's Edge resists analysis; it represents the band as they are: a contained explosion. You don't pick apart Frontier's Edge; you feel it all at once. "Somehow, we wrote six songs in two days," says The Budos' drummer, Brian Profilio. "Tom was able to take what we were doing and put it together in a cohesive manner." Whether this is your first rodeo with The Budos Band or you've been following them throughout their two-decade run, Frontier's Edge contains their musical universe - Afrobeat, Ethiopian music, proto-metal, any number of other streams - in microcosm.

Acclaimed producer, songwriter, and vocalist Shafiq Husayn has been a vital force on the Los Angeles music scene for decades. A member of trendsetting trio Sa-Ra Creative Partners, Shafiq has produced tracks for a staggering spectrum of talent, including Erykah Badu, Ty Dolla $ign, Pharoahe Monch, Robert Glasper, Ice T, Bilal, Jurassic 5, and many more. Over the last few years, the Grammy winner has also become the leader of The Dove Society, an expansive L.A. musical collective. Now, Shafiq Husayn and The Dove Society are debuting the new album So Gold, an eclectic masterpiece emerging from sessions Shafiq describes as “pure love, magic, inspiration!” A worthy follow-up to Shafiq’s acclaimed 2018 opus The Loop, the album features contributions from Anderson .Paak, Syd (of The Internet), Peyton, Thurz, Jimetta Rose, Speed Walton, and many more. Bursting with the kinetic energy of vibrant creative collaboration, the album synthesizes disparate styles into a cohesive tapestry of lush cosmic soul. “It’s new age everything and above,” Shafiq explains. “Focused and direct in the songwriting and production, but still adventurous and refreshing.

Mighty Baby evolved out of the Action, club favourites who released a number of poor-selling singles. Dropped by Parlophone, musical chairs saw Ian Whiteman (keyboards/flute) and Martin Stone (guitar) join and the music now blended progressive psychedelia with longer pieces dominated by instrumental prowess rather than Reggie King’s soulful vocals. King departed and guitarist Alan King and Whiteman began to share vocal duties on newly penned material like ‘Egyptian Tomb’ and ‘House Without Windows’ that, in retrospect, can be seen as reflecting light from the dark star of the Grateful Dead.

“Mighty Baby” was first released on the Head label on 7th November 1969 in a superb gatefold sleeve with artist Martin Sharp serving up the arresting front cover that looked like a lion being showered in blood. The album received positive reviews, with International Times stating “The music has a hundred characters… Eastern, Oriental, country, folk, rock, blues, pop etc. etc… At this moment in time Mighty Baby’s record is simply THE best thing in its class.”

The album is now seen as a progressive rock classic; cohesive, with no low spots, the inventiveness and musical prowess on a par with the equally revered, albeit jazzier, prog rock band Cressida. This latest edition from Ace, not only replicates the gatefold sleeve of the original but also contains an inner sleeve replete with memorabilia from the collection of Richard Morton Jack

“Mighty Baby” is a must-have purchase not only for fans of the band but those who want to discover this classic progressive rock album for the first time.

Originally released in 1957 Mal Waldron’s Mal/2 album features some of jazz music’s biggest names. Joining Mal Waldron (piano) are John Coltrane (tenor sax), Idrees Sulieman (trumpet) and Ed Thigpen (drums) amongst others. This new edition of the album is released as part of the Original Jazz Classics Series and is pressed on 180-gram vinyl at RTI with all-analogue mastering from the original tapes by Kevin Gray at Cohearent Audio and presented in a Tip-On Jacket.